Formal Statement Read to Secretary Richard Hall, Maryland State Department of Planning

I read the following statement today during a formal meeting between the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners to the Maryland State Department for Planning Secretary Richard Hall:

Mr. Secretary, the Tier Map requirements from the recently passed Septic Law, the planned Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (Cap and Trade), and The Watershed Implementation Plan’s prominent use of Best Available Technology for Septic tanks (meaning nitrogen removing septic systems) causes much heartburn -- even Prilosec does not help.


You recall selling your PlanMaryland initiative as being simply a benign means for the various state-level departments to coordinate? More like the opposite of benign; we are experiencing state control over how rural land owners develop, operate, and use their private real property.

PlanMaryland, Septic Law requiring various Tier categories, Watershed Implementation Plans (which for Calvert County brings along with it a 1.3 Billion dollar bill), upcoming Cap and Trade legislation all tie together under the philosophical term “sustainable development”.

This state imposed philosophy diminishes property rights of our citizens. I reject this intrusive concept of state-dictated land use and related behavior modifications.

For this “Septic Law”, how can we not object to these state efforts considering the county must request an exemption from the Maryland State Department of Planning for the Tier IV restrictions on major subdivisions whereas your department will then determine conformance of the county tier boundaries with state statutory guidelines; whereas your department will then determine if the Area as a whole might meet the 1 lot or fewer per 20 acres threshold to qualify for the exemption; whereas your department makes a final determination?

More than an implied threat if we do not adhere to this Septic Tier categorization by the end of this calendar year your department will prevent the start of any new major residential subdivision. Sure does sound like your department is intruding into decisions on our local land use.

Local officials throughout Maryland who swore an oath to defend the principles of the U. S. Constitution represent the last line of defense for our citizens against this intrusion.

While I reject the intrusion of state central planners into our local land use decisions, we should also express disagreement with the state following lock-step in its adherence to the term “sustainable community” which we all know is an offspring of the term “sustainable development,” as coined by the World Commission on Environment and Development back in 1987, and refined in UN One World Government vision called Agenda 21.

Our own planning documentation such as the county Comprehensive Master Plan and the various Town Center Master Plans are relevant. They are produced by working with various community groups and individuals. I support these planning documents as they reflect the views of the citizens, although, we need to ensure we detach whatever parts are merely the adoption of Agenda 21.

Forcing local authorities to alter their own comprehensive plans is abhorrent to local governing and yet is consistent with Agenda 21 which goes far beyond building and fire safety codes. Those Agenda 21 planning efforts include: residential, property maintenance, energy conservation, wild land interface, and other behavior modification codes.

A sustainable community is a community around which the all mighty and powerful OZ,… I mean the government, draws an Urban Boundary Zone and forbids delivering city services outside the zone, prohibits new construction outside the zone, and requires residents within the zone to live in housing that meets the size and cultural integration standards set forth in law by state central planners.

Sustainable communities are high-density communities where automobiles are discouraged, and bikeways and walkways are the alternative to public transportation. The state is forcing this philosophy upon the rural areas of Maryland. No wonder there is validity to the term “War on Rural Maryland.”

The Governor clearly takes an elitist approach requiring everyone to live in small homes on crowded lots and walking to work; if employment even exists these days. That philosophy is clearly political. It’s about control, and not based upon science of cleaning the bay. It represents the most extremist views supporting high density areas. Those of us who want to be free from central planning intrusion tend to live in the rural areas.

Calvert County officials are not the only ones in Maryland who are concerned. Like the Cecil County Commissioners who voted unanimously to tell the State “NO”, I will not go quietly. I defend the property rights of our citizens and oppose the State unlawfully taking property rights of farmers’ and other rural citizens’ without just compensation.

The mandated revisions to county master plans and initiation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative are reminiscent of those Central Planners in Moscow and Beijing. I guess next there will be created a series of “Five Year Plans.”

The state focuses upon septic tanks in the rural areas whereas septic contribution of nitrogen and solids into the Chesapeake Bay if at all is minimal. Central planners completely ignore the vast areas of impervious surfaces in large urban areas such as Baltimore City and ignore the large amount of effluent that gets dumped into the water streams by large waste water treatment centers. Anybody measure the water quality of the Inner Harbor or Anacostia River lately?

State central planners ignore the overwhelming amount of debris that enters the bay from the Conowingo Dam that spans Cecil and Harford county borders on the Susquehanna River. That debris is readily present as far south as the Potomac River (well south of us in Calvert County). I personally observed some of that debris last year when September 9, 2011, 44 flood gates were opened due to the impact of the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee.

As far back as 1998, the US Geological Service reported that the Conowingo Dam, the Holtwood and Safe Harbor Dams further upstream may reach capacity before the year 2020 (just 8 years from now); no longer able to function to reduce the nutrient and sediment load hitting the bay… and the state has done what?

Most recently, the U.S. Geological Survey Report 2012-5185 published August 30, 2012, clearly established inadequacy of the Science used as a base for Watershed Implementation Plans and thus all the other land grabbing legislation, Best Available Technology, etc.

Environmental zealots are moving full steam ahead at implementing unnecessarily harsh and ineffective regulations under the guise of the necessity to comply with Federal regulations when in fact, Maryland is interpreting and implementing the Federal regulations unlike any other State.

The state requiring that local governments spend funds we do not have (in our case $1.3 Billion) to remove a fraction of a percent of nitrogen and solids is a waste of tax payer money.

It defies logic to force us to focus upon the minuscule amount of nitrogen present in our septic tanks while too little is done in areas further north of us that have far greater impact upon the quality of the Chesapeake Bay. It defies logic that central planners continually pick on the farmers and residents in this rural county.